We still have one old station, on a corner in town, basically a small box, with an overhang almost touching the road. Been out of use the 20 years I've been here. We live in a town of about 1200. The lot where my shop is, was a service station at one time, and one of the "good ol' boys" told me at one time there were 6 or 7 stations in town. There was one, the Co-op, but when the new BP NON-service station came into town, with the inconvenience store, the Co-op shut down. The son now does oil changes, tires, etc, out of the old service station, but it ain't like it used to be - they'd come out and pump your gas, for about a penny more than the BP, but everyone quit going there. Sad. Now your money is taken by a kid with piercings over every inch of their face (male and female alike), reading a magazine, and acting like you are putting them out, by giving them money!

I remember how when I was young, we had jobs for kids - you could work delivering newspapers, pumping gas, at the local grocery store, or even sweeping up at the hardware store. Not any more. What took 4 people to do, is now being done with one and a computer, the newspapers are gone, and the one that's left is delivered by motor route. The bowling alley, theater, town swimming pool, even the arcade, are all gone. Now, the only work the kids can find is reading the magazine at the BP, or warming the bench on the town square.

Sure glad I'm not a teenager today...

R

 

If anyone has a CASLO OIL SIGN please pm me....Number dummy might have 1 somewhere. Bill

 

You always talk about your eyes going south on you Bill, but my much younger peepers didn't catch that LTD at all.

My first car was a '77 LTD in jade green, with a 302 swapped in to replace the blown factory engine (which I believe was a 400...wish I'd cared when I was younger). If I turn my head to the right, there's a picture of me standing next to it. I'll have to add that one to the gallery when I get home.

Used to fill that car for 0.98c a gallon in suburban Chicago.

The green one was bought to replace another '77 in gold that belonged to my grandmother. Hers was much nicer though, with power windows and those neat vacuum operated headlight covers.

Not quite the same, but growing up...THOSE were my good old days.

 

Virto, I have an off topic question, did you ever hear of a place called the White Stucco Lounge in Des Plains? My first panel truck had lettering for the White Stucco Lounge Race Team on it.

I always wondered about the history of the truck. It had some major damage to it, looked like it suffered from a rollover and someone hammered the roof out and filled it with Black Magic body filler. I am assuming it might have been hauling a race car on a two wheel trailer, a tire blew out and flipped the whole rig.

 

There were two 1975/78 LTD's.

One had exposed headlights (like the white one pictured), one didn't.

The models that had the vacuum operated headlamp covers (which were always on the fritz), were: Landau's (2drs), Broughams (4drs) and Country Squires.

Bill Walford, I never heard of Caslo. I'd make a guess it's either brand of gasoline sold in the midwest, or mebbe it's an abbreviation for castoroil!

Bill, ever hear of Powerine, Hudson, or Terrible Herbst?

 

Bill Calso was Standard Oil Co of California which i think eventually turned into or was already Chevron. That pic of their sign i posted i found on a auction site called Proxybid however it was from 2005 and the sign was sold for 350.00. I went cruising through Ebay and found this:

Calso Supreme California Gas Oil Porcelain pump plate - eBay (item 380068673348 end time Oct-09-08 18:38:00 PDT)

All i did was a search for Calso Oil and came up with a couple things which was that and a oil can from them too.

 

Bob,

I spent alot of years in this old Cadillac dealership here in Albuquerque that was built in the late 40's. We had those old in the ground hoists. We had both the dual posts (with independant controls for front and rear) and the single posts. When the hoists would get low on hydraulic oil they would do exactly what you mentioned. The guy next to me bent the frame on a 1977 Seville when the hoist jumped the last 12" and tossed that car in the air a foot or so.


Bobby

 

Man, lifts CAN be fun! When I worked at a Sears, we would have to put the lifts in the air, and swab the decks under them at the end of the day. We had a piece of wire, that we'd use to hold the lever for the air, so we wouldn't have to hold them to lift the lift, and could lift them all at once. Well, we had a kid one time, who did that, but didn't realize that one side of the end lift was under a car that was parked alongside it. You can imagine his surprise when he turned around and saw the car just about ready to roll over. We played H**L getting the car back on the ground, because the lift had drug it closer, and there wasn't enough room to set it back down, without digging into all sorts of goodies in the undercarriage with the lift arms.

Wish we had the digital camera's, or phone cams back then...

R

 

I don't know it off the top of my head, but I'll do some poking around and see what I can find for ya.

Bill, both LTDs were 4-doors. I don't remember anything going wrong with them over the life of the cars (the gold car was wrecked in the mid 90s).

I do remember being a small lad of perhaps 6, climbing into Gram's car and pretending to drive even though I could barely see over the steering column. Haha I flooded the hell out of it, I remember that much.